May 25, 2011

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Time Spiral Theme Deck Giveaway

It’s that time again- a new set and a new comment contest! We’ll be handing out a brand-new copy of Reality Fracture, one of the more intriguing of the set’s decks:

The Reality Fracture deck highlights the interaction between suspend and storm. Manipulate the time stream just right, and you’ll set up a single, explosive, game-winning turn!

In the first few turns of the game, use the suspend ability of cards in your hand, preferably so they have the same number of time counters on them. Meanwhile, you’re vulnerable to attack, so you may need to use Rift Bolt or Grapeshot to take the pressure off.

After a few turns, your suspended cards will have counted down all the way. Ideally, you’ll remove the last time counter from two or three of them on the same turn. Play those spells, then play your spells with storm. You get an extra copy of each storm spell for each other spell played that turn, so the copies will add up! Empty the Warrens could give you a huge Goblin horde, or Ignite Memories could result in over a dozen damage. Suspended creatures come into play with haste, so after they attack, your opponent might just have been dealt 20 damage in a single turn!

To maximize your storm spells, hold on to cards like Claws of Gix and Coal Stoker. They’re easy to play on the same turn as other spells, which will increase your storm count. But don’t be too greedy! Depending on how the game is going, it may be better to get three storm copies on turn 5 than five storm copies on turn 7. If setting up a giant turn isn’t working, simply attacking with your hefty creatures is a good backup plan.

The “Reality Fracture” deck includes cards like Clockspinning and Jhoira’s Timebug that manipulate counters. Use them to sync up the number of time counters on your suspended cards—even if you have to add a time counter! Or if you need a suspended card immediately, remove the last time counter from it. Clockspinning also interacts with other counters, like the ones on Serrated Arrows or Dreadship Reef.

How do you win? Good question! Once all eight of the review articles are up, we’ll wait the customary three days and select one of the articles at random. Then, we’ll select one of the commenters on that article (again, at random), and voila! We have a winner!

As always, we’ll be looking for comments that show a little insight or reflect on the piece. The “cool deck, kthanxbai!” ones won’t quite cut it.

This is all part of our continuing effort to spread the joys of the precon decks we all love, and to give back to the community who give us their comments, wit, banter and insight each article.

The first Time Spiral article is already up, so feel free to get started!

I always thought Blue-red as a strange combination. Those colors are focused on instant and sorceries and their decks tend to fall on the low end of permanents in play. Previous blue-red decks that have been successful on tournaments are usually packed with sweepers such as Nevinyrral’s Disk, Jokulhaups, and Pyroclasm, or depend on a single card that has to be protected with blue and complemented with red. One example of the last kind was the Dragonstorm deck that dominated standard, thanks precisely to this synergy between storm and suspend.